Asked for his vision for that land in the future, he said it was “that we [and the Palestinians] are not doomed to live together; it is our destiny to live together. This is our birthplace, but also the birthplace of others from here.”

So how would he resolve the Palestinian conflict? “When I was nine,” he replied, “there were only 300,000 Jews here, and we built a state… Now there are 6 million Jews. If there were 10 million Jews here, we wouldn’t have to give up on anything,” he said, presumably referring to both territory and democratic principles. “If not, well, we have to live together.”

How so? “A confederation,” he suggested, adding “but not [in a situation] in which each side is educated that the other side represents a disaster.”

Rivlin has been a longtime supporter of Jewish settlements in lands claimed by the Palestinians. While rejecting Palestinian independence, he has proposed a special union in which Jews and Arabs would hold common citizenship but vote for separate parliaments.

“He has an opinion on the two-state solution, but he is not widely seen as an ultra-nationalist,” said Mitchell Barak, a pollster and political analyst. “He’s one of voices of reason in Likud; he’s not a hothead like Danny Danon.” The president-elect’s views on the peace process are not born of hatred for Arabs, as his voting record and his statements as Knesset speaker attest, and the Arabs and the world at large know that, he said.

Even the editorial board at Haaretz has sympathies for Rivlin. It endorsed him for president before Tuesday’s election, together with former Supreme Court judge Dalia Dorner. “For years, Rivlin has preached the need for cooperation between Jews and Arabs. And as Knesset speaker, he extended a hand to the Arab factions, in sharp contrast to his colleagues on the right,” an editorial read last week. “He opposed the wave of nationalist legislation in the previous Knesset, and paid for this stance in the Likud party primary. He has always maintained independent views.”

In a recent interview with The Times of Israel, he made plain that he does not believe in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but promised that he wouldn’t interfere in government policies, regarding peace or any other issue.

“I won’t intervene in Knesset decisions. [The MKs] will decide Israel’s borders, and its [policies on] peace. The president is a bridge to enable debate, to reduce tensions, to alleviate frictions,” he said. “It’s not for the president to determine the arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians, and the Arab world,” Rivlin added, “but to be the bridge between opinions, and to facilitate dialogue and understanding.”

By championing peace, Peres offset Netanyahu’s hawkish policies. But Reuven Rivlin’s views, if aired publicly, could get Israel into trouble, some analysts warn

President-elect Reuven Rivlin opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, a position that contradicts that of the incumbent president, and to some extent also clashes with that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who at least publicly professes to support the idea of two states for two peoples.

Shimon Peres, by repeating in every meeting with world leaders over the last few years that “there is no other game in town than the two-state solution,” somewhat counterbalanced the hawkish policies of the two last Netanyahu governments. Now that the popular Nobel peace laureate is being replaced by someone who rejects that two-state solution, how will Israel fare in a world that wants to see the creation of a Palestinian state, and overwhelmingly blames Jerusalem for the current stalemate in the peace process?

For the head of state to espouse views so radically different from those of the head of government could spell serious trouble for Israel, some analysts fear. Others, however, point out that the president has limited powers to intervene in policy issues and that, more importantly, Rivlin is unlikely to publicly oppose positions adopted by the government.

“Ruby Rivlin can do a lot more harm than Peres did good,” said Prof. Gadi Wolfsfeld, an expert on political communications, using Rivlin’s nickname. A president who speaks continually about the need for peace hardly raises an eyebrow abroad, “but a president who talks about opposing two states and in favor of settlements — that would certainly make huge headlines.”

Bad news spreads more quickly – and widely — than good news, Wolfsfeld said, and statements undermining Israel’s image as a state interested in reaching a fair peace agreement with the Palestinians will certainly be seen as bad news in the international media and capitals around the world.

“Ninety percent of Israel’s problems with the international community have to do with the perception that the government is not doing enough for peace,” Wolfsfeld said. “If Rivlin says provocative things, then we’re in trouble even more. If he avoids slips of the tongue of the kind we know he is sometimes prone to make, we should be alright. But he could certainly say things at some point that could embarrass the government.”

Rivlin is an emotional character who often says things in the heat of the moment that he later regrets, Channel 2’s chief political analyst Rina Matzliah said. Once the born Jerusalemite moves into his fancy new residence on 3 President’s Street, he should try to keep his more controversial views to himself in order not to embarrass the government, she recommended. “But based on our experience with Ruby Rivlin there is no chance that he will do that.”

Ari Shavit, a veteran journalist for the left-wing Haaretz newspaper, suggested that Rivlin will not be the president of Israel but that of Greater Israel. “He will exploit the presidential institution to advance the West Bank settlement project, which he worships, and the one-state solution he believes in,”Shavit wrote. Rivlin, he predicted, “won’t hesitate to speak out and act to foil any attempt to divide the land.”

But Rivlin is more than his opposition to a two-state solution. During his two terms as Knesset Speaker, he wasn’t afraid to confront the right wing — for example by opposing legislation he deemed as discriminatory and undemocratic, which won him many friends even among Israeli left-wingers. MKs Ilan Gilon (Meretz) and Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) voted for Rivlin, as did all four MKs from the Arab-Israeli Ra’am-Ta’al faction.

“He has an opinion on the two-state solution, but he is not widely seen as an ultra-nationalist,” said Mitchell Barak, a pollster and political analyst. “He’s one of voices of reason in Likud; he’s not a hothead like Danny Danon.” The president-elect’s views on the peace process are not born of hatred for Arabs, as his voting record and his statements as Knesset speaker attest, and the Arabs and the world at large know that, he said.

Even the editorial board at Haaretz has sympathies for Rivlin. It endorsed him for president before Tuesday’s election, together with former Supreme Court judge Dalia Dorner. “For years, Rivlin has preached the need for cooperation between Jews and Arabs. And as Knesset speaker, he extended a hand to the Arab factions, in sharp contrast to his colleagues on the right,”an editorial read last week. “He opposed the wave of nationalist legislation in the previous Knesset, and paid for this stance in the Likud party primary. He has always maintained independent views.”

Presidents have strong opinions but limited powers

In this context, it should be remembered that Israel’s president is a largely ceremonial figure with very limited powers when it comes to questions of war and peace. There is no more vigorous advocate of a two-state solution than Shimon Peres, and yet he was unable in his seven-year term to bring Israel any closer to an agreement (although he sure did try, for example in 2011, when he and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had essentially reached a draft agreement on “almost all issues” after several secret meetings in Jordan,as he revealed last month.)

The president’s functions and duties are outlined in The Basic Law: The President of the State, which was passed in 1964. They include signing laws, appointing governments (based on who’s best equipped to form a stable coalition), accrediting the state’s diplomats and commuting sentences. Importantly, the law does not state what the president is not allowed to do. Hence, there is nothing that would prohibit Rivlin from speaking his mind about issues he deems important.

However, that doesn’t mean that Israel’s 10th president will take advantage of that option and tout his view on the peace process to every international dignitary who visits Jerusalem. “A president is only as influential as he wants to be,” Barak said.

Peres, who was to the left of Netanyahu, did not seek confrontation with Netanyahu’s governments, and neither will Rivlin, several analysts predicted.

“Peres had different views but he always expressed them in a dignified, reserved way. He didn’t overstep the boundaries of his position; he reported everything he did to the prime minister and didn’t do anything without his consent,” said Arye Carmon, the founding president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

Rivlin, too, will most likely stay out of politics, Carmon assessed. “I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a profound champion of democracy, and I have very serious doubts whether he will express those views [on Palestinian statehood] from the President’s Residence,” he said. “My assumption is that he will always respect the decisions of the democratically elected government.”

Most if not all of the incoming president’s energies will be devoted to internal issues, such as strengthening democracy, promoting better governance and advocating for more tolerance and unity, he presumed.

What does Rivlin himself say about the issue? Ina recent interview with The Times of Israel, he made plain that he does not believe in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but promised that he wouldn’t interfere in government policies, regarding peace or any other issue.

“I won’t intervene in Knesset decisions. [The MKs] will decide Israel’s borders, and its [policies on] peace. The president is a bridge to enable debate, to reduce tensions, to alleviate frictions,” he said. “It’s not for the president to determine the arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians, and the Arab world,” Rivlin added, “but to be the bridge between opinions, and to facilitate dialogue and understanding.”

Indeed, the presidency’s nonpartisan character “is its raison d’être,”he stated last month, at the height of his campaign. “The ability of the president to be perceived as someone with whom all Israelis can identify depends on his ability to avoid being a party to debate. The politicization of the presidency would pose a real threat to the institution and its function.”

During the next seven years, Rivlin will have the opportunity to prove that he has truly abandoned the world of politics and policies, and focus on what he pledged his presidency will be all about: uniting a fragmented society and promoting social values, education and democracy.

Former Hamas government spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein announced today that in private meetings with Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas insists that he is lying in his public statements in order to "trick the Americans":

"When I go out [publicly] and say that the [PA] government is my [Abbas] government and it recognizes 'Israel' and so on, fine -these words are meant to trick the Americans."

Al-Ghussein, who was Hamas government spokesman until the advent of the new unity government with Fatah, posted these words about Abbas's duplicity on his Facebook page.

At the end of the post he laughs at those Palestinians who trust Abbas and the reconciliation.

The following is the post describing Abbas' "tricking the Americans":

"You know what Mahmoud Abbas says behind closed doors?? He says: 'Guys, let me [continue] saying what I say to the media. Those words are meant for the Americans and the occupation (i.e., Israel), not for you [Hamas].What's important is what we agree on among ourselves. In other words, when I go out [publicly] and say that the government is my [Abbas] government and it recognizes 'Israel' and so on, fine - these words are meant to trick the Americans. But we agree that the government has nothing to do with politics (i.e., foreign relations). The same thing happened in 2006,' he [Abbas] said: 'Don't harp on everything I tell the media, forget about the statements in the media.'Come on [Abbas]!The problem really isn't with him [Abbas], the problem is with whoever believes him. Ha, Ha, Ha! (I really do want real reconciliation, meaning partnership and achieving unity, but not reconciliation as Abbas means it)."

As we have shown, the Nawara's fall coincides with the police firing a rubber bullet. Of that there is no doubt. We can hear the sound of two separate firings, which sound identical, from two rifles. We see the paper wad after it is expelled from the rubber bullet attachment. We have synchronized the events and there is no way that the bullet fired then was live.
The many posts I have on this topic, and the comments with further research, and other people's work, all show this to be true.
So we have two verifiable, seemingly contradictory facts: Israeli forces didn't fire a live round at the time Nawara fell, and he was killed by a live round. How can these be reconciled?

A postmortem examination of the exhumed body of one of two Palestinian teenagers killed by Israeli forces at a demonstration last month has reportedly identified wounds consistent with live ammunition, despite the Israeli military's denial that it used live rounds that day.

The killings of 17-year-old Nadeem Nawara and 16-year-old Mohammad Salameh caused international outrage and calls from the US for a full investigation after their deaths were caught on video camera footage that made clear the boys posed no threat to Israeli forces at the time of their deaths.

This week Human Rights Watch issued a report suggesting that the killing of the two boys was a war crime. "The wilful killing of civilians by Israeli security forces as part of the occupation is a war crime," said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's Middle East and North Africa director.

...Anonymous senior Israeli military officials quoted in the local media attempted in the aftermath of the killings to suggest the footage had been forged or a mystery Palestinian gunmen had actually killed the boys – shooting four rounds over a period of more than two hours, apparently without being noticed by several dozen Israeli soldiers and police.

Yup, Israelis are a bunch of liars and are engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide its decision to shoot boys wantonly. It is so fortunate that none of the Israelis seen in the CNN video are running to testify to "Breaking the Silence."

Speaking of, although it has not been translated into English, I strongly urge you to read the Google translation of this lengthy article in Maariv. It is the real "Breaking the Silence." The reporter interviews dozens of IDF soldiers as to their frustration at their inability to defend themselves from Palestinian Arab rioters. The rules of engagement are so vague, and the consequences of firing against IDF policy so onerous, that many decide to just let themselves be attacked by stones and Molotov cocktails rather than fire back. Rioters climb on army jeeps with impunity. One waves his private parts at a soldier knowing he will not respond. Even tear gas and rubber bullets require special permission and can only be used under specific circumstances. More than one soldier describes himself as a "sitting duck."

I don't know the rules of engagement for the Border Police, but I imagine they are largely identical and their limitations are equally vague.

In short, while there are no doubt violations of the rules of engagement sometimes, the idea that these Israelis, with all the cameras around, would shoot two kids dead in the most open area possible is insane.

But that's not the main proof.

As we have shown, the Nawara's fall coincides with the police firing a rubber bullet. Of that there is no doubt. We can hear the sound of two separate firings, which sound identical, from two rifles. We see the paper wad after it is expelled from the rubber bullet attachment. We have synchronized the events and there is no way that the bullet fired then was live.

So we have two verifiable, seemingly contradictory facts: Israeli forces didn't fire a live round at the time Nawara fell, and he was killed by a live round. How can these be reconciled?

Of course there was no Palestinian Arab gunman at the scene with a gun shooting Nawara on video. We would have heard that shot. Similarly, the idea that he was shot by Israelis 250 meters south, who were dealing with a different riot, at the exact same moment of the rubber bullet, is impossible, because the sound would have been different on the CNN audio.

When you eliminate the impossible, the remainder, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

The only way to understand what might have happened is to recall the infamous Mohammed al Dura incident, where the boy that was supposedly killed by the IDF ignited the intifada. Al Dura became a poster child for Israeli brutality. All evidence shows that he was not killed by Israeli fire.

There are clearly some people who are not above killing a child in order to further their cause. And there are many people who want to spark a new intifada. There are people with the incentive to kill a Palestinian Arab youth and manipulate events to make it appear that Israel did it.

Nawara was not killed on camera. He was killed somewhere between the video and his arrival at the hospital. Maybe even by an M-16, which are available in the West Bank.

I think Nawara was probably hit by a rubber bullet, although perhaps he was instructed to fake a fall as soon as he heard a shot - we saw at least one other fake "victim" at the same incident only minutes before the Nawara incident, and his fall seems inconsistent with being shot in the chest with a live bullet, to say the least.

The final piece of the puzzle is that Palestinian Arab "witnesses" lie, constantly, for their cause. we've also seen that in this case (the bullet that Nawara's father showed CNN, for example, and other testimony in the case claiming that Israeli forces to the south were firing at the protesters, even though none of the protesters ever look in that direction.)

If Nawara would have been shot in the ambulance, or en route to the hospital, no one would be talking about it. Such a conspiracy of silence would be unthinkable in Israel or any Western nation, but unfortunately Palestinian Arabs know what would happen to them if they publicly go against the party line.Far fetched? Yes. But we have motive, we have opportunity, we have a scenario where no witness would publicly contradict even the most stunning cold-blooded murder. No one wants to make such an incendiary claim and reporters don't want to go down that path, but if you want to reach the truth, that is the path that must be followed.

And these are the questions that are not being asked about the death of Nadim Nawara.

Three synagogues in Israel sustained significant fire damage over the weekend, in what police suspect were arson cases. No injuries were reported and it is unclear at this time whether the cases are related.

The first fire took place at a synagogue located at the Morasha School in Petach Tikva, where the structure was burned to the ground. The second incident took place near Wadi Ara, where a Chabad synagogue housed in a caravan caught fire and was severely damaged.

According to available details, both fires appear to have taken place in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The third incident saw the Great Synagogue on Hovevei Zion Street in Petach Tikva set ablaze. Firefighters were called to the scene around noon Saturday, and were able to extinguish the flames. Several Torah books were completely burned and the synagogue's Torah ark was damaged.

"Initial findings suggest that an unknown individual entered the synagogue in the middle of the day, when it was empty, opened several books, poured a flammable liquid on the ark, set it on fire and fled the scene," a statement by the Petach Tikva Police said.

There have reportedly been ten such synagogue attacks in Israel recently.

In this video, Moshe Feiglin in the Knesset asks the Minister of Public Security Yitzchak Ahranovich about these 10 synagogues that were burned recently in Israel. He asks him what percentage of the time invested by the police/Shabak in interrogating kids who spray painted slogans somewhere will be used to look for those people who are responsible for burning the synagogues. And if, he asks, they discover that whoever did it was from an Arab village, will he demand that that village be destroyed, as he said recently about a Jewish town in the Shomron from which he claimed that spray-painters came from, even though there was no proof?

Not to justify "price tag" graffiti in any way, but it is unbelievable that synagogue arson gets less attention in Israel than it does when it happens in Europe or North America. There is a real problem, and it is not kids spray-painting offensive slogans.

We have previously discussed Mohammed Dajani, the leader of the tiny Palestinian Wasatia party, who is essentially the only Palestinian Arab moderate enough to publicly endorse a statement drafted by an Israeli liberal giving Jews and Arabs completely equal rights to live in the territory of British Mandate Palestine.

Dajani is also the person who visited Auschwitz with some of his students to withering criticism from his fellow Palestinian Arabs.

Mohammed Dajani, the Al-Quds University professor who received plaudits and threats earlier this year after leading the first organized group of Palestinian university students to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, has resigned from the university after weeks of mounting pressure.

He heads the Department of American Studies and is the director of the Al-Quds University Library, which has just moved into an impressive new building.

Professor Dajani told Haaretz he felt he had no choice after the university authorities refused to back up their private assurances with a display of public support after what he described as a campaign of “incitement” against him from some members of the university faculty.

Following the Auschwitz trip, Dajani was denounced as a “traitor” and “collaborator” by Palestinian critics and expelled from a university staff union. He says it is important for Palestinians to understand their “enemy” – the Israelis – including the role the Holocaust plays in shaping Israeli policy and consciousness.

Dajani submitted a letter of resignation on May 18, hoping the university authorities would reject it and denounce the campaign against him. Instead, he received a response from the university personnel department that his resignation would take effect on June 1.

“I wanted the president of the university to take a stand by not accepting my resignation and in doing so to send a clear and loud message to the university employees and students, and in general, to the Palestinian community, that the university supports academic freedom and considers my trip as an educational journey in search of knowledge by which I broke no university policy, rules, or regulations,” Dajani said.

“Some may consider my letter of resignation from Al-Quds University as a kind of ‘surrender’ to those opposed to academic freedom and freedom of action and of expression. I don’t,” he said. “In submitting my resignation, I feel I took the battle to a higher level. My letter of resignation from Al-Quds University was a kind of litmus test to see whether the university administration supports academic freedom and freedom of action and of expression as they claim or not.”

Dajanai said he decided to resign after his students were told that university officials had played an active part in the campaign against him, including his expulsion from the staff union – an organization he never joined in the first place. He was also dismayed that in its only official response to the trip, the university tried to distance itself from their professor, claiming he was "on leave" and acting "in a personal capacity."

In May, Dajani met with Prof Sari Nusseibeh, the outgoing university president, and Dr Imad Abu Kishek, the incoming president, who assured him privately that they were committed to academic freedom at Al-Quds, that he had broken no university rules in taking his students to Auschwitz and that none of the university’s leadership supported the campaign to oust him from the university. Dajani says he decided to test their resolve by submitting his resignation so they could reject it and give him their public backing – but they didn’t come through.

Dajani spoke at a peace forum in Israel last month, in English. The entire video is here.

Author:

Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty field investigator, wrote an interesting articleabout the challenges of fact finding in war situations.

One of her main points is that eyewitnesses are often unreliable. For example:

In Gaza, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and other places I interviewed civilians who described what they thought were artillery or bomb strikes being launched by far away government forces and striking near their homes – whereas in reality the loud bangs and tremors were caused by mortars or rockets being launched by opposition fighters from their positions nearby. For the untrained ear it is virtually impossible to distinguish between incoming and outgoing fire, and all the more so for those who find themselves close to the frontlines.

Another factor she mentions:

Even if they disregard it, investigators must be alert to the fact that disinformation and misinformation can contribute to shaping the perception of events, the narrative surrounding the events, and the behaviour of people who take it in good faith and internalize it, including victims, witnesses, and others potential sources.

Here Rovera is referring to lies that spread quickly and then become widely believed – including by “unbiased” NGOs – before anyone has a chance to investigate. How many times have we seen that?

She gives a specific example from Gaza:

Fear can lead victims and witnesses to withhold evidence or give deliberately erroneous accounts of incidents. In Gaza, I received partial or inaccurate information by relatives of civilians accidentally killed in accidental explosions or by rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that had malfunctionedand of civilians killed by Israeli strikes on nearby Palestinian armed groups’ positions. When confronted with other evidence obtained separately, some said they feared reprisals by the armed groups.

Meaning that “eyewitnesses” will often claim that there was no terrorist activity in the area of an airstrike and Israel wantonly and indiscriminately killed people for no reason.

Unfortunately, in many cases the NGOs themselves are part of the problem. Rovera admits, a little elliptically:

Conflict situations create highly politicized and polarized environments, which may affect even individuals and organizations with a proven track record of credible and objective work. Players and interested parties go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate or manufacture “evidence” for both internal and external consumption.

It is a shame that Rovera didn’t include Amnesty International itself as being guilty of this, and she ascribes the lack of objectivity almost only to fake evidence that is created by one side rather than to the ideological desire to find war crimes when none exist.

They might strenuously deny it, but Amnestyand HRWhave systemicbiases against Israel. This article, while a step in the right direction, only scratches the surface of how NGOs themselves contribute to the culture of lies in order to issue their reports and maintain their funding without doing basic fact checks.

And while Rovera notes that some “eyewitnesses” act out of fear, she doesn’t go far enough. At least in the territories, the lies about Israel are repeated so often that the witnesses will often tell Western reporters and researchers what they expect to hear rather than what happened. This isn’t necessarily out of fear; it is part of their culture to ensure that Israel is always blamed no matter what. It saturates their media. I cannot counthow many times “eyewitness” accounts were found to be complete fiction, and fear didn’t enter into the equation. However, many of the “witnesses” happen to workfor the largest employer in the West Bank – the PA – which lies constantly.